Zodiac Project

Designed environments are an important ingredient in any communication mix, and like every medium, physical space comes with its own unique strengths. RGI's Zodiac Project is a serialized compendium of principles exploring the unique advantages of the designed environment as a storytelling medium. Each principle is personified by an animal with which it shares a significant quality, much like the astrological zodiac. The Zodiac Project was made possible through collaborations with artist Randy Crider and big thinker Paul Krajniak.

Designed environments engage multiple senses, leading to longlasting memories and connections with the content of the space.

A 2014 study found that interacting with an environment through touch is likely to lead people to an enjoyable experience, lasting memories of the experience, and heightened creativity. For marketers, this makes a brand more memorable and associates positive experiences with the brand. For museums, tactile experiences are likely to bring visitors back to the museum for return visits. In any context, tactile, hands-on experiences with products and ideas lead to positive outcomes.

Hee Kim and Shanker Krishnan. 2014. "Where is the Fun in Creativity? The influence of Product Touch or Consumer Creativity." Abstracts, Conference of the Society for Consumer Psychology, March 6-7, Miami.

Squirrels use a combination of smell and memory to locate hidden nuts. They often use landmarks to help themselves remember.

The participant identifies with the goals of the designed environment and this identification extends the effects of the experience past the time of the visit.

Positive design is a design movement to elevate people’s subjective well-being, or happiness, through design. The practice aims to promote pleasure, virtue, and personal significance in products, applications, services, and spaces. In a 2013 essay on positive design, researchers described additional characteristics of positive design that can be measured through research. One of the most important and measurable characteristics of successful positive design is the long-term effect on well-being or happiness. When designers create opportunities for people to experience delight (pleasure), achieve outcomes that are good for people (virtue), and reach goals (personal significance) through the design of products and spaces, it can improve people’s well-being in the long-term.

An exhibit composition and order by its nature can be assembled by how much time has been given to the experience.

A 2010 study found that when the same traveling exhibit was displayed in different layouts, visitors made more contact with individual displays when they were easily accessible, but spent more time with more exhibits when they were all highly visible from one to the next. This suggests that the layout of space has an impact on the way people explore and interact with it, including the amount of time that they spend doing so.

The designed environment provides a flexible model for structuring information. This multi-leveled effect motivates the user to transform their experience into a desire for more knowledge.

By creating environments that change the way we think, we are able to promote critical thinking. A 2016 study from the University of Cincinnati explores the effects of structured environments on decision-making, and indeed, "causal relationships in environments." The three-part study suggests structured environments encourage more thorough and thoughtful decision-making. The reseearchers emphasize the influence of the surrounding environment on the way people make decisions.

Fuller, D. (2016). New Research Reveals How Structure Increases Careful Thought About Decisions. [Press release] University of Cincinnati.

Butterflies go through four phases of metamorphosis during their lives.

Though a designed environment can be composed and ordered, a person chooses the order in which the experience happens. It gives the person both a sense of freedom and the enjoyment of curation.

Both orderly and disorderly environments have distinct effects on people, and distinct advantages. A 2013 study suggests that people are likely to behave in certain ways, depending on the apparent organization of the space around them. It showed that in orderly environments, people were likely to behave in healthy, generous, and conventional ways, and choose objects labeled as "classic". Disorderly spaces encouraged creativity and led people to choose objects labeled "new." Any of these behaviors could be beneficial, depending on the intent of the space. In either case, the designed environment can encourage behaviors and mindsets, while still giving people the freedom to compose their own experience.

The designed environment can form or reframe awareness of a topic or idea in a very limited amount of time.

Unlike most forms of media which we can selectively turn on or off, physical space is a medium that we tune into 100% of the time. It’s innate – we’re hardwired to scan our environment for information because it helps us survive. Our surroundings are often mundane, but when we encounter something truly amazing, it triggers emotions ranging from fascination, to curiosity, and even awe. According to psychologists, two things must occur in a person’s mind to experience awe; one, a perception of vastness, and two, a need for accommodation—that is, an opening of the mind to find a place inside where the new experience will fit. Awe-inspiring physical spaces—both natural and designed—open people’s minds to new ideas and new possibilities, helping them to reframe their preconceptions and form lasting memories.

April Zodiac Bonus

In celebration of Earth Day and in anticipation of the new Earth Science exhibit RGI will be installing at NASA Goddard Visitor Center next month, check out this video about the Overview Effect and the life-changing awe of seeing Earth from space.

The designed environment is a spatial experience model capable of addressing many of the complexities of how we learn.

Famed psychologist Howard Gardner’s theory of multiple intelligences suggests that people learn in alignment with their intelligence (or, abilities), which take multiple forms; including musical-rhythmic, visual-spatial, verbal-linguistic, logical-mathematical, bodily-kinesthetic, interpersonal, intrapersonal, and naturalistic. Gardner was one of the first to acknowledge the diverse ways that people develop knowledge. Environments and exhibits create opportunities for many kinds of interactions, supporting diverse learning styles and expanding people’s access to information and ideas.

A well-designed environment has the potential to shape or reshape people's attitudes about any given topic, quickly.

Design is perceived intuitively and encourages us to form attitudes, notions, and even decisions quickly. Consider your cell phone. There’s a good chance you chose it because of the way it works and what it enables you to do. But, there's also a good chance that its physical appearance influenced your decision to purchase it, too. Consider the way that the design of your cell phone makes you feel, and how that influences your perception of the company that produced it. It's this invisible influence that makes design so powerful, and environment design can be as profoundly influential as product design, when it comes to the way that people behave in response to it. In 2004, Don Norman, arguably the foremost author and educator of human-centered design, expounded on his 1988 foundational book The Design of Everyday Things,with Emotional Design: Why We Love (or Hate) Everyday Things, demonstrating how design makes us feel and affects our behavior. According to Norman, design shapes our attitudes and plays an important role in our decisions to purchase, repurchase, visit, and return, though we might not always realize it.

PEARL | Peacocks display their six-foot fan of tail feathers to communicated attitudes to one another. They even rustle these feathers, creating an infrasonic message that other peacocks can hear, but humans cannot.